3 mins

by Marilou Duponchel

Published on January 21, 2022 at 10:30 a.m. Updated on January 21, 2022 at 10:30 a.m.

© “Inherent” by Nicolai G.H. Johansen / Snowglobe

This week, “Les Inrocks” share their favorite short films unearthed on the Arte website.

Six short films in particular caught our attention this week. They are directed by Sameh Alaa, Saïd Hamich, Alexis Langlois, Juliette Saint-Sardos, Antoine du Jeu, Nicolai G.H. Johansen…

I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face by Sameh Alaa

Golden Palm of the Cannes Film Festival 2020, I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face follows, for a day, the journey of Adam, forced to disguise himself as a woman to see one last time the face of the one he loves. Concealed under a veil, the boy manages to make his way where the men of Egyptian society are not admitted. Third short film by Sameh Alaa, I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face is a mute and intuitive film that advances with the camera on board without ever verbalizing its issues but with a tenacious belief in its character and in the expression of affects. A film of mourning collected in a short duration, encapsulated in a square format, it also looks like the painful reverse shot of a story of an impeded love and a sacrificed youth.

I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face on Arte.

The Departure of Saïd Hamich

After having filmed the return of a thirty-year-old to his childhood lands in the South-East of France in a beautiful first feature film released in 2018 (Return to Bollène ), Saïd Hamich follows this time, in this film which is his first short film, the departure of Adil, eleven years old, who will soon leave Morocco to join his father in France. It is with a beautiful sobriety of features and a very fair modesty in emotion that the Franco-Moroccan filmmaker, a former graduate of La Fémis, manages to capture something of the passage of this time before departure and to inscribe in this daily life which makes the world of Adil the melancholic trace of the memory.

The Departure on Arte.

Dorothy's Demons by Alexis Langlois

In a recent issue, the magazine Court-Circuit d'Arte addressed the theme of Halloween. And what better way to celebrate the disguise and its glittery excess than to dive into the subversively kitsch universe of Alexis Langlois with Les Démons de Dorothy, which is also currently enjoying a theatrical distribution? With this new film, the young French filmmaker pushes the satire even further with always a lot of fun. After the war against the cis led by a band of flamboyant trans warriors in Terror my sisters, it is towards another system of oppression that Alexis Langlois turns, who imagines here in the person of Dorothy, played by his sister Justine, beloved actress of her films, a perfect alter ego of a filmmaker who, deprived of creative freedom by funding committees, will not hesitate to knock down its authority by giving life to a deliberately queer cinema, freed from standards.

Dorothy's Demons on Arte.

Inherent by Nicolai G.H. Johansen

Teenage movies and vampire movies have often gone hand in hand (from Twilight to Morse). The alloy is not new and metaphorizes the beginnings of the changes that adolescence and self-discovery can bring about. Sensual awakening and sexual appetite become bites, bodily fluids smell of blood. With Inherent, presented at Critics' Week in 2021, Danish filmmaker Nicolai G.H. Johansen takes up this teen mythology on his own, but in an extremely dry, mute and horrifying film. In this stripped-down and sensory staging, a young blonde heroine wanders through padded and misty landscapes, sets her sights on a young man and seems prevented from living her life by a strange presence sleeping in the attic.

Inherent on Arte.

Super Nova by Juliette Saint-Sardos

With Super Nova, Juliette Saint-Sardos simultaneously paints the portrait of a young girl of today, bimbo and goddess with incandescent beauty An easy girl by Rebecca Zlotowski, but also a subtle and elegant theoretical and feminist object on the act of looking and the shift from a state of coveted object to the status of looking. Strolling through the city, a space reserved for men, Sasha is constantly spied on. But as she crosses the heat of the nights and days of Marseille, her gaze falls on a young man, a handsome erotic angel, who asks nothing of her.

Super Nova on Arte.

Antoine du Jeu’s Vacation Friend

As he lands in Paris to reunite with a vacation love, Aurélien (Quentin Dolmaire) may think he can hold back this fleeting summer weather. But as soon as he arrives unexpectedly, he bumps his head against reality: Fanny, the holiday lover, has a boyfriend and has closed this summer break well. She still agrees to take in the expelled for an indefinite time. With L'Ami de vacances, already spotted at Côté Court in June 2020, Antoine du Jeu, former critic for Cahiers du Cinéma, produces a wonderful comedy that captures with great precision and humor the contemporary and uneasy portrait of a certain youth. Parisian, chaining roommates and internships, but also something of the state of the feeling of love and its tiny variations.

The Holiday Friend on Arte.

The editorial staff recommends you

Also read